Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Japanese have taken their fetish for sexy maids to a new level with this Maid PC case which is a Mini-ITX compatible case hidden within the hips and legs, and covered by a choice of one of two maid skirts.

Prince did a cover of Creep, one of my favourite songs by Radiohead, at a concert recently and videos of his performance on YouTube were shamelessly blocked by Prince's own record company and that made Radiohead very angry. From Yahoo News:

In a recent interview, Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince's performance from a text message and thought it was "hilarious." Yorke laughed when his bandmate, guitarist Ed O'Brien, said the blocking had prevented him from seeing Prince's version of their song.

"Really? He's blocked it?" asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. "Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment."

Yorke added: "Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our ... song."

I just did a search on YouTube and some videos of the performance are now online. Here's one of them. Watch it before Prince blocks it again.

After watching this, I guess I now know why Prince doesn't want anyone watching this on YouTube. Bloody hell, he murdered the song!

This Dream Desk may look so old and out of place in the modern office - well, it's made in the 40s - but check out its "play side" which has a built in fridge for all your beers and other drinks, a pull out mixing bar, bar racks, two decanters and even a personal safe. Just make sure your boss isn't around when you party aye.

Wanna make your own fine wine in the comfort of your home? WinePod is a state-of-the-art tool for small lot artisan winemaking that is easy to use. It integrates fermentation, pressing, and ageing in one elegant unit. It also comes with an interactive winemaking software that guides you step-by-step through the winemaking process and records your winemaking data. Ok, I want one at home!

Finnish artist Mimosa Pale created a giant vulva bicycle taxi so disgusting and shocking that I had to post a censored image of it here. Who in their right frame of mind would actually ride inside this? I know pussy and bikes are two favourite things for guys but combining the two into one is not a good idea.

In what could be the most daring or foolish act ever in the history of the blogosphere, a blogger has challenged MM Lee to sue him. I really hope he has a lot of money to spare. From Singapore Dissident:

This is Gopalan Nair in Singapore today, May 29, 2008. I have been in Singapore since May 25, 2008, and staying now at Broadway Hotel, Room 708, 195 Serangoon Road, Singapore 218067.

I am deliberately stating my identity and my present exact location for a definite purpose. On day 2 of Lee Kuan Yew and son verses Dr. Chee Soon Juan case, Lee senior had said in answer to a question by Dr. Chee, that if he, Lee Kuan Yew, knew the identity of bloggers in cyberspace who defamed him (defamation being used of course in the Singaporean sense), he will sue and bankrupt them.

He had earlier sidestepped the question by saying, that he had difficulty suing critics of his in the Internet because their identities were not usually known. When pressed, he categorically and deliberately stated that he will sue if they made known their identities.

Update: According to the Sunday Times (1 June 2008), Gopalan is now under police custody and charged with e-mail abuse. He was believed to have sent an email which was directed against Judge Belinda Ang. The police are charging him under the offence of "threatening, abusing or insulting a public servant". No updates on his blog about this yet. Channel NewsAsia's report here. (Thanks Mr Big, ANG, Lancerlord)

Dude draws cute chicken cartoons on sticky notes. He says, "Like some sort of haunting supernatural force, the chickens bubbled up from the ol' subconscious mind. In a trance-like state, I drew them on office whiteboards. I drew them in notebooks. I drew them on anything that sat still long enough. People started asking, "Who's drawing those damn chicken cartoons everywhere?" The chickens were unstoppable. To retain my sanity, all I could do was grab a stack of sticky notes, and release the Savage Chickens.

The late David Wasserman nailed small pieces of tin cans, aluminum soda cans and other metals to sheets of plywood, to create large-scale but incredibly detailed pictures of people, powerful beasts, the depths of space, family photos and urban cityscapes.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Send artist Shawn Feeney your photo and a photo of one of your close friends. He will then draw a composite of your two faces. His aim is to draw a total of 64 facial images of composite friends. He will then draw a series of composites from the composites; 32 drawings combining four faces each, 16 drawings combining eight faces each, and so on until finally there is one drawing derived from all 128 faces. Amazing project!

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured a breathtaking image of the Phoenix Lander passing infront of a huge crater on the way to its picture perfect landing on Mars. HiRise has also taken images (here and here) of the lander hardware hours after its landing. The HiRise blog has more updates and also check out NASA's Phoenix website for more info about the Phoenix mission.

Professional computing gaming is big business in Seoul which also happens to be the home to the world’s first ever professional computer games league. The Listening Post travelled to the South Korean capital for an insight into the country's strange world of professional computer gaming. From Listening Post:

Kim Eun-dung, the director of the STX Soul team says there are about 22 people currently living in the squad's house.

"Living in the house at the moment we have the pro-players who take part in match games, apprentices trying to become pro-players, and a few coaching staff … all eating, sleeping and training here," he says.

"Some apprentices are as young as 12 and players generally continue their career into their 20s. It seems the players aiming to become pro are getting younger and younger."

A lot of gamers spend many years living in their team house.

"I started my gaming career when I was 17, so I've now been leading the life of a pro-gamer for almost 3 years,” Jin Young-soo, one of STX Soul’s star gamers, says.

"In my third year of high school I went before my parents and told them: 'Mum, Dad, this is better suited to me than studying. I'm going to live as a gamer, I’m going to Seoul to try out at the team house.'"

Although they live away from home the gamers are fully cared for. The team director's sister, Ajumah Kim, lives in the house and does the players' laundry, cleaning and other housework.

Vuestar, a Singapore company which owns patents focusing on internet searching via visual images, identity security and copyright assets, is demanding website owners to pay them a fee if their website "has been developed by or for a URL addressee/owner and uses visual images to hyperlink to other pages in which any first or subsequent page provides the contact details of an Organisation would in Legal terms appear to use the steps and methods outlined in a claim of the Patent".

Yup. WTF!

Vuestar has started issuing invoices (see a scanned copy above and view the rest here) to a number of websites in Singapore. According to its Vuestar's FAQ page, those who do not pay up will not be able to use images to link to other pages on their websites:

What happens if I don’t pay?You will not be granted the VUESTAR User Licence and will be unable lawfully to use visual images to access the worldwide web. Our collection agencies will recover unpaid fees.

What if I still use visual images to access sites/content?Having been provided with proper notice of VUESTAR ’s rights, you will be deemed to have entered into a user Licence and be liable for a fee each year based upon usage/traffic. Our collection agency will recover any annual unpaid fees.

I think this is perhaps the most ridiculous thing that I have ever come across and no one should pay these suckers a single cent at all. Violating their intellectual property? Intellectual property my ass! Since when is linking images be deemed as an intellectual property?

If they think they can profit by charging websites for linking images, then they are not only stupid and brainless but they are also so very, very, very wrong and I'm sure the law for the benefit of the internet community, will not allow these suckers to do so regardless if they have the damn patent or not.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tokidoki is a company that designs and sells apparels, bags, cosmetics, toys, etc. It is famous for its unique interpretation of Japan. The colourful artwork used on all its products is amazing and I especially love the girls. Pretty!

Etsy member cyberhadji says, "This is a print from a series of illustrations on vintage book pages. The illustrations are my re-imaginings of the video game characters nearest and dearest to my heart." Check out his work here.

These rust and scratch stickers are designed to make your beautiful bike/car look rusted and scratched so that passing thieves assume it's not worth stealing. Dude who's selling them says, "I have stuck them to my shiney new red bike and can confirm it hasn't been stolen yet. 13 days of not being stolen in London probably equates to 7 years of non-stealing in the friendly countryside."

Monday, May 26, 2008

Watch this famous short film that takes you exponentially outward from a picnic in a park — first one meter, then 10 meters, then 100 meters, etc. — to show humanity’s place in the universe, and then reverses the process, going inward by powers of ten to look inside the human body and finally inside individual atoms.

An auction house is helping Dow Chemicals sell the services of India's Prime Minister on eBay for 10 million rupees. From eBay:

DOW Chemicals, headquartered in Michigan owns a substantial portion of the professional services offered by Dr. Manmohan Singh (henceforth referred to as the product), currently anointed as the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India. Because of the high price commanded for his services, he is widely regarded as the most honest politician of India. And despite the high price tag, the product has excellent VFM and RTI factors. He has consistently been the most valuable service provider for Dow Chemicals, a multi-milllion dollar company with thousands recruits. Dow retained the right to lease him out or sell him to third parties without any explicit approval. The company has decided to sell its stake in the product, and any individual or corporation is free to place an open bid for his services. It must be said that like gold, oil, food and land, the value of prime minister of India increases exponentially with time and experience.

Mike Sacks' funny little piece for the June 2006 edition of Esquire, is about the perils of reading those Ikea furniture instructions. The ending is classic! You can view his other works here and here.

Looks like I'm not the only one who is complaining about my StarHub DVR set-top box not recording the final moments of the American Idol finale during the live telecast last week. Those in the U.S. faced the same problem too with their TiVos. From Buzzwatch:

“The winner is … David …” Argh!

That’s how last night’s “American Idol” finale wrapped up for some viewers who had taped the show on TiVos and other digital-video recorder devices. Because “Idol” ran slightly long, some DVRs cut off the show before the winner was revealed–leaving those viewers hanging at the most suspenseful moment.

The poorly timed cutoff has become something of a tradition for the Fox program. Viewers who timeshifted the show with DVRs were denied the climactic moment last year, too.

If anything, this year’s incident was worse. The “Idol” finale came down to two contestants, both named David. Some viewers report that their DVRs stopped recording just after host Ryan Seacrest uttered the words, “The winner, by 12 million votes, of ‘American Idol’ 2008 is…David”–but before he revealed the last name.

The folks at Robot-Models use old car and motorcycle spare parts to make this wonderful sculpture of Optimus Prime. They can also make other Transformers such as Bumblebee, Blackout, Megatron, Jazz, Ironhide and Blackout too.

Stephen Wiltshire who was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 years old, uses his incredible photographic memory to draw amazingly accurate huge drawings of cities like Rome (above) and Hong Kong after just one helicopter ride.

Dude sent away a briefcase with a GPS device to DHL with instructions to where it should go to around the world. The GPS then recorded the briefcase's journey and its paths were used to create his self portrait on the world map!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

The folks at New Tork Times now allow anyone to browse through their past issues from Volume 1, Number 1 on September 18, 1851, through December 30, 1922. Amazing! They call it their TimesMachine. Now, if only our Straits Times will do something like this instead of charging people for old news.

Dude built the world's lowest street legal car inspired by the Batmobile and it's even jet powered! The jet engine is fitted behind the internal combustion engine at the very rear of the car. It is a home built gas turbine jet engine. Man, I have to get one of these beauties.

The Incredible Edible Anus is a new line of chocolates by Bisous. These chocolates are created with one thing on their mind: to produce a combination of taste and touch that takes you to "chocolate anus heaven". What will they think of next?

You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no weapons or foreign objects. You are not allowed kicks to the groin. The children are merciless and will show no fear. If a child is knocked unconscious, he is "out." The same goes for you. So how many 5 year olds can you take in a fight? Me: 26! Bring them on!

MIT Free Culture, a student organization at MIT creates YouTomb, a site that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation. From YouTomb:

YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm...

When a user-submitted video is suspected to infringe copyright, the rights holder is contacted and given the option to take down the video in question. In addition, rights holders can submit DMCA takedown notifications at any time that cause YouTube to immediately remove alleged infringing content.

MIT Free Culture became especially interested in the issue after YouTube announced that it would begin using filtering technology to scan users' video and audio for near-matches with copyrighted material. While automating the takedown process may make enforcement easier, it also means that content falling under fair-use exceptions and even totally innocuous videos may receive some of the collateral damage.

As YouTube is not very transparent with the details surrounding this process and the software used, YouTomb was conceived to shed light on YouTube's practices, to educate the general public on the relevant copyright issues, and to provide helpful resources to users who have had their videos wrongfully taken down.

Last night, Star Movies held an exclusive preview screening of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull at Lido in Orchard. Ok before I write further, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the Indiana Jones. I don't know why. I love George Lucas and I've watched all his Star Wars films - religiously, I must add - but I never could find the same the love with his past Indiana Jones movies but oh boy, did I love this latest one alright.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull features Indiana Jones who not surprisingly has aged quite a bit, against the bloody Russians for a crystal skull. I have to say that Harrison Ford is amazing once again in this latest Indiana Jones. Only in Hollywood can you get an old man do all the jumping, fighting, running without breaking any bones. The movie has a surprising alien theme to it. Yup you read that right. Aliens! And spaceship. It's like watching an episode from The X-Files!

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is one hell of an entertaining movie from the start to finish and it may just be able to give the aging Indiana Jones some more new fans. The casting of Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones' son is a masterstroke by both Lucas and director Spielberg because Shia is like the next big thing and he can definitely carry the mantle of Indiana Jones for years to come. I also think Shia LaBeouf is the luckiest young dude on the planet now man. He got to play with big farking robots and now this. Also having George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as his friends has got to be really cool. Damn I'm jealous.

Congratulations to my boy David Cook for winning American Idol. The result was announced this morning (Singapore time) live on Ch 5 in a two hour American Idol Season Finale. Some would say that David Cook winning the competition is a shocker but I wasn't surprised at all.

Yesterday, I already knew who's the likely winner thanks to the folks at DialIdol who once again correctly predicted the winner of American Idol. If you look at the data collected by DialIdol throughout the season, you can see that David Cook got most of the votes every week. There's no doubt. David Cook is the deserving American Idol.

Many thanks David for bringing us your own version of hits like Always Be My Baby and Billy Jean, and for turning me into a big fan of yours. I'm so happy that you won and I'll be looking forward to your album man. Rock on!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

What's scarier than having toy monsters in your room at night? Have them glow of course! Here is a gallery of Glow In The Dark Classic Monster Movie Kits. Aurora Plastics made these monsters back in 1975 to capitalise on the monster craze back then.

Oh no! Japan has gone bonkers. It has appointed Hello Kitty as its ambassador to welcome tourists from China and Hong Kong. From AP:

The tourism ministry on Monday named Hello Kitty as its choice to represent the country in China and Hong Kong, two places where she is wildly popular among kids and young women.

Officials hope that tapping into that fan base will lead to a bigger flow of tourists into Japan, and closer toward their goal of attracting 10 million overseas visitors every year under the "Visit Japan" campaign...

At a press conference, Sanrio Co. President Shintaro Tsuji called Hello Kitty's new appointment "an honor" and pledged to "work hard to attract many visitors."

A student gets creative with his answer to a question in his biology paper: Draw the human body and locate the various parts such as Pituitary Gland, Adrenal Gland, etc. Check out his answer. If that's an art paper, he'll get full marks for creativity.

Here's a living proof that overworking yourself may help accelerate the process of aging. These photos taken from 2004 to 2007 show a Japanese newscaster turned from a handsome young man with black hair into a man that looks very frail with hair all becoming gray. Scary!

Kids draw the craziest things, you say? But for Korean photographer Yeondoo Jung, their drawings actually provide him with the artistic inspiration for a series of amazing photos he took. He recreates scenes found in children’s drawings like this wizard on a broom stick. I love his work!

It's amazing how popular my post, Watch Intro Clips of 1980s Cartoons is. I posted it back in November 2006 and to date, it has been linked by dozens of sites, blogs and forums and read thousands of times. I spent this morning watching all those clips I've linked to in that post again. I've also updated some of the YouTube links that aren't working. Go watch them aye. Enjoy.

Friday, May 16, 2008

This is another one of those crazy Japanese inventions. The USB Head Massager looks like a distant cousin of those evil Sentinels from The Matrix movies. But unlike the Sentinel's search and destroy role, the USB Head Massager is far less deadly. It helps to ease your headache by gently moving its tentacles to massage your head. Ok, that's scary.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Kate keeps a record of some of her daily purchases by drawing them on her blog, Obsessive Consumption. So far she has accumulated three years worth of purchase drawings! Kudos to her for keeping it up. You can also view the drawings on her Flickr photosets here.

As Seen On

Creator of hit show Singapore Haunted. Spurs fan, experienced astronomer and occasional ITK. I.Z. Reloaded covers news, pop culture, blogs, websites, gadgets, the fascinating and the weird from a Singapore perspective. The blog is a runner up in both the 2006 Weblog Awards (Best Asia Blog) and the 2004 Asia Blog Awards (Best Singapore Blog). Contact him at izreloaded[at]gmail[dot]com.